Rome's Walking Dead: Resurrecting a Roman Funeral at the Ashmolean Museum
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Rome’s Walking Dead: Resurrecting
a Roman Funeral at the Ashmolean
Museum
by Jane Masséglia
T he Ashmolean Latin Inscriptions
Project (AshLI) is a three-year
collaboration between the universities
DEADFriday, an open-doors event
designed to coincide with the
Hallowe’en weekend. Since much of the
by the ancient sources, including Juvenal,
Suetonius, Cicero and Polybius (a useful
nineteenth-century digest of the literary
of Warwick and Oxford, and the Ashmolean’s corpus of stone evidence for Roman funerals can be
Ashmolean Museum. Its remit inscriptions is funerary, from engraved found in William Smith’s Dictionary, online
comprises, aside from photographing, ash-urns to tombstones, death and at http://bit.ly/1LfzET6). It quickly
cataloguing and translating the burial in the Roman world is one of the became apparent that the AshLI team
Museum’s collection of more than 350 core interests of the AshLI team. We could not muster the necessary numbers
Latin-inscribed objects, a wide-ranging have found that one of the key on its own, and so we appealed for
programme of public- and schools- challenges in teaching with these volunteers from Warwick and Oxford
engagement: as well as the epigraphers funerary objects has been giving a sense Universities, and were delighted by the
(inscriptions specialists), imaging how they were originally displayed and enthusiastic response. The eventual cast
experts and digital encoders, Professor used. Cleaned white marble urns, comprised members of Oxford’s Classics
Alison Cooley’s team also includes a tastefully displayed in high-ceilinged Faculty and postgraduates, a team of
PGCE-qualified Classics teacher and galleries, do much to evoke the country Warwick Classics postgraduates, and a
blogger, and a trained podcast producer. houses of eighteenth century collectors, small number of alumni.
Their aim is to tell stories of Roman life, but little to conjure the sights and smells Even with these additional helpers,
using inscriptions as a starting point, of Roman tombs, or the sound and the cast threatened to be a large one. We
through INSET days, free teaching bustle of the processions that delivered thought it best that the various different
resources, short films and regular a Roman’s remains to their final resting roles should all be at least represented,
podcasts made available through the place. With this kind of even if the overall number of
project’s blog ‘Reading, Writing, contextualisation in mind, we had individuals performing that role had to
Romans’. In 2015, the team organised recently unveiled a new display of be limited. So it was that we settled on a
the first in a series of large-scale, direct columbarium plaques (from communal cast which we hoped would give the
public engagement events, when it tombs with individual urn-niches) in the right impression of size and variety: a
staged a Roman funeral procession in Museum’s subterranean Reading and dominus funebris (funeral director), the
the Ashmolean Museum. Writing Gallery (Figure 1). Armed now wife and eldest son of the deceased, two
with both Roman urns and a Roman freed slaves, two imago carriers
tomb, we felt the staging of a Roman (processing with the wax images of the
funeral and procession was the very best deceased’ ancestors), one Archimimus
The Call from Beyond way of bringing the objects to life. (sending-up the deceased), two lictors,
four professional mourners, one bucina
‘The Oxford Centre for the Humanities player, one aulos player, two couch
(TORCH) sent out a call in September bearers, and a priest. While we would
2015, encouraging any university The Cast have loved to have had the full panoply
research groups working on ‘deathly’ of musicians, sourcing the instruments,
subject matter to submit proposals to Our designation of roles and the and finding those able to play them
take part in the Ashmolean Museum’s sequence of events were largely dictated naturally curbed our ambitions. In the
The Journal of Classics Teaching 17 (33) p.31-34 © The Classical Association 2016. This is an Open Access article, distributed under the terms of
the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives licence (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/), which permits
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. https://doi.org/10.1017/S2058631016000088
Designing the Programme
We followed a conservative funeral
programme, beginning with the laying
out of the corpse at home, processing to
the place of cremation, a eulogy for the
deceased, and the transportation of the
urn to the family mausoleum. In the
lower-ground floor of the Ashmolean,
we took over the Jameel Eastern Art
space as our Roman home. Rather than
simply launch into the funeral, we
decided to use the character of the
dominus funebris, played by Dr Llewelyn
Morgan, as a way to introduce the
spectators to some of the participants
and explain their roles. To form the
procession, he called up each cast
member up in turn, reminding them
what they should be doing. Before the
procession was allowed to move off, it
was admonished with an adapted reading
from the funerary legislation laid out in
the Twelve Tables, the early Roman law
code of the fifth century BC, which
contains gems such as ‘never smooth the
ashes of pyre with an axe’, ‘no more than
ten aulos players’ and ‘never put gold on
a pyre, unless it’s part of the corpse’s
dental work’. This opening act from the
dominus funebris allowed us to set the
scene for the museum visitors, as well as
highlight some of the more unfamiliar
elements of Roman funerary tradition
(Figure 3).
With our lictors clearing a path ahead
of us, we processed through to the large
Ashmolean Atrium, to the sounds of the
instruments and our wonderful team of
mourners, led by Dr Helen Slaney, crying
‘eheu!’ and ‘vae vae!’ as they beat their
breasts and pulled at their hair. Here we
stopped, in an open area where more
spectators could look down on us from
the stairwell and the upper balconies, for
Figure 1. | New Ashmolean display of columbarium plaques and funerary urns beneath the eulogy and cremation. For obvious
niches hand-painted by Claire Venables. The urn of Abascantianus stands bottom right. reasons, we could not stage a real
cremation and so, while Dr Matt Hosty, as
end, my husband and I (erstwhile of the widow and professional the eldest son, delivered a moving eulogy
trumpeter and clarinettist respectively), mourners, we found it unproblematic to for his father, half of the funeral cortege
took on the roles of bucina and aulos cast women as imago holders and moved off, and returned with the filled
player, embarking on three months of musicians. Our primary aim was to urn as a fait accompli. Dr Ed Bispham, as
rehearsals that must have confounded evoke the spirit of a Roman funeral, the bolshy freedman, was then able to tell
our neighbours. We allowed ourselves with its varied participants, and the assembled crowd, in the best Greek
some licence in matching the gender of demonstrate its key features. Finally, tragic tradition, about the events which
our modern volunteers and their ancient with our cast of 18 in place, and with had occurred off-stage, and give a sense
roles. While we cast men in the role of the first-century relief from Amiternum of what a Roman cremation involved.
eldest son, funeral director, couch- as our guide (Figure 2), we set to work After setting off once more, we moved
bearer and priest, and women in the role preparing our programme and props. noisily though more galleries, until we
32 Rome’s
Downloaded from https://www.cambridge.org/core. IP address: Walking Dead:
46.4.80.155, on 07 Resurrecting a Romansubject
Sep 2021 at 12:09:43, Funeral
to at
thethe Ashmolean
Cambridge Museum
Core terms of use, available at https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms
. https://doi.org/10.1017/S2058631016000088
Figure 2. | Amiternum relief, first century BC, showing a Roman funeral procession, in the Museo Nazionale d’Abruzzo, L’Aquila, Italy.
from ancient practice) to provide a
handle (Figure 4). The team produced a
short video showing how they made
these masks, which is available online:
http://bit.ly/1WhVYTe.
The plaster mould of my own face
was used a second time to cast a red-
blotched face for our own corpse. This
face was bound to a cloth body
constructed from coat-hanger shoulders
and a body of cushions, using crepe
bandages. The corpse was then dressed in
a toga and gold wreath and had a replica
Roman coin affixed to its mouth. The
funeral couch was constructed in the
form of a table, with a plywood surface,
four shapely legs made from stair spindles
and a reclining headrest from a defunct
sun-lounger. Two long carrying poles
Figure 3. | Dr Llewelyn Morgan, as the dominus funebris, admonishes the procession not to were attached horizontally; the whole was
smooth the pyre with an axe.
then sprayed gold and upholstered with
reached our priest, anointing us with an Roman funerary urn which stood in the heavy curtain fabric. Once the corpse was
olive branch and dismissing us with the new columbarium display, and which was in place, he was secured to the couch with
traditional cry of ‘ire licet!’ dedicated to the memory of a man named ties, and covered with a brocade blanket.
Tiberius Claudius Abascantianus. We laid The Roman ideal, of having the corpse
printed photographs over a cardboard recline on one elbow as if still alive, was
Looking the Part core to create a model urn which could be beyond our capabilities, but we were
nonetheless pleased with the result.
carried in the procession – even if the
In preparing for the funeral, AshLI museum had ignored all conservational
benefited from three pieces of good best-practice by allowing us to use the real
fortune: that one of the AshLI Research thing, its weight of 140 kg would have
Fellows, Dr Hannah Cornwell, is an been no small obstacle.
experienced costume-maker; that we were The wax masks held by the imago
able to supplement our own costumes holders in antiquity are likely to have been
with those from Oxford’s most recent death masks, cast in plaster from the face
Greek Play; and that a student from of the recently deceased. Without this
Cherwell School, Amy Chaplin, came to option to hand, our imagines were cast
us for work experience in the week from the faces of AshLI team members.
leading up to the event. Hannah was able Using plaster bandages, and wax tinted
to fashion togas and tunics from bought with cream-coloured dye, we produced Figure 4. | Emma Searle and Dr Enrico Prodi
fabric and adapt existing costumes. Amy three good masks, each with a wooden channelling Abascantianius’ ancestors with
and I worked together on a replica of a spoon embedded (a necessary deviation wax imagines.
Rome’s Walking
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46.4.80.155, on Resurrecting
07 Sep 2021 ata12:09:43,
Roman Funeral
subjectat
tothe
theAshmolean Museum
Cambridge Core 33
terms of use, available at https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms
. https://doi.org/10.1017/S2058631016000088
cortege, it became clear that participants
in a Roman funeral must have relied on
firm plans and on following the person
immediately ahead of them (Figure 5).
Voices and even line-of-sight were easily
lost beyond a few paces, and we found
ourselves relying on our lictors, armed
with their fasces, to carve a path through
the crowds. It was easy to imagine
something of the feeling of a Roman
funeral, not as a solemn march in good
order, but an emotional outpouring at the
very limits of decorum. This
transformation we only felt once the
Museum was full, which made our
funeral the noisy, crowded affair that, we
Figure 5. | The AshLI funeral cortege in close formation. hope, would have made any Roman
proud. A video of the funeral, shot by
the Oxford Classics Media Team and
The Deceased urn and the life of the real Tiberius Claudius
Abascantianus can hear a recording of the edited by AshLI, is available online on
our blog, ‘Reading, Writing, Romans’:
short talk that Alison Cooley gave on the
Given the nature of our source material, we http://bit.ly/1LvPRzd.
night, complete with images, now online at
chose to commemorate a wealthy male Ashmolean Images are © Ashmolean
http://bit.ly/1KbfcVg.
Roman. Not only are aristocratic funerals Museum, through Claire Venables,
better documented than others, but the Masterstroke and IWPhotographic. The
public role of Roman men allowed us to Amiternum relief is in Public Domain.
tailor our script towards the Unexpected Finds
commemoration of a well-known public Jane Masséglia (AshLI 2013-16),
servant. Having chosen the urn we wished In preparing for the DEADFriday event, University of Leicester
to use, that of Tiberius Claudius the AshLI team were required to dabble jeam2@le.ac.uk
Abascantianus, we decided to construct the in a variety of ancient skills, from wax
dead man’s biography to suit the cast we had casting, to public speaking, clothes
For other articles on the value of
assembled. As the youngest members of making and playing ancient instruments,
re-enactment, see:
our cast were postgraduates, we took a few and it was interesting to discover how
liberties with his age and identity. The real challenging each was, according to its Dickey, E. (2015). An Immersion
Abascantianus was only 22 years old, and similarity to skills we already possessed. Class in Roman Education. Journal of
was commemorated by his parents But it was the process of performing the Classics Teaching, 31, pp. 38-40.
following his death in the south of France. funeral twice, in an Ashmolean packed Access is available through http://
For the purposes of the funeral, with over 4,000 visitors, which produced journals.cambridge.org/action/
Abascantianus became an elderly Roman the most unexpected result. The wailing displayIssue?decade=2010&jid=
knight, who had served, amongst other and thrashing of the mourners, the bawdy JCT&volumeId=16&issueId=
places, in ‘rain-swept Britannia’. By creating behaviour of the Archimimus, the 31&iid=9790151
a new character, Matt Hosty, who composed discordant music, the low-lighting and the Parker, A. (2012). The Gullibility
and delivered the eulogy, was able to work in deep crowds of the spectators, all of Teenagers. Journal of Classics
details of the Roman cursus honorum and give contributed to a sensation of barely Teaching, 25.
a sense of the kinds of posts that a contained chaos. In a public environment
Access is available through www.arlt.
successful Roman might have held. Anyone where onlookers did not keep strict
co.uk
who would like to hear more about the ash silence, and pressed curiously around the
34 Rome’s
Downloaded from https://www.cambridge.org/core. IP address: Walking Dead:
46.4.80.155, on 07 Resurrecting a Romansubject
Sep 2021 at 12:09:43, Funeral
to at
thethe Ashmolean
Cambridge Museum
Core terms of use, available at https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms
. https://doi.org/10.1017/S2058631016000088
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